


The Future is a Dying Art

by DarkIsRising



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Dark, M/M, Prompt Fic, Tumblr Prompt, but no one dies?, so thats good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-19 01:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29742831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkIsRising/pseuds/DarkIsRising
Summary: Prompt:The future is a dying art / Laying in a ditch in the dark / I need you here but all I hear (is) / The beating of a broken heart / Don’t wait to say goodbye / you’re running out of time / whatever you believe, it’s easy to see / the whole world’s sitting on a ticking bombPlasma, the color of madness, cuts through Obi-Wan’s chest and for one brief, bright moment the pain is excruciating. It withdraws and with it goes the strength of his limbs. His knees hit the durasteel platform with a crack that he can hear from far away but it doesn’t hurt.
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 16
Kudos: 38





	The Future is a Dying Art

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sanerontheinside](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanerontheinside/gifts).



Plasma, the color of madness, cuts through Obi-Wan’s chest and for one brief, bright moment the pain is excruciating. It withdraws and with it goes the strength of his limbs. His knees hit the durasteel platform with a crack that he can hear from far away but it doesn’t hurt.

His chest doesn’t hurt.

Nothing hurts.

Through a red shield, Qui-Gon’s eyes are the wrong color, and as the shiver of shock sets in, Obi-Wan can’t help but feel like that is the most unjust part of all. His eyes ought to be blue. His hair ought to be stroked with silver. His face ought to be serene; the face of a man that lives in devotion to the present. Who accepts each new moment as it comes and not a second sooner.

This isn’t the master he knows. Not this anguished creature that roars his name behind a laser barrier that steals Qui-Gon’s voice as surely as the passing seconds steal Obi-Wan’s life.

This isn’t the future Obi-Wan had been promised. The visions that have followed his sleep, clung tight to his dreams, have been murmuring for years about this moment. About the rise of a darkness that was so immense it could fell the great Qui-Gon Jinn. 

_Always in motion, the future is,_ he’s heard Master Yoda say time and time again.

 _Your visions are an unpromised tomorrow,_ is what Qui-Gon has told Obi-Wan when he would wake with his master’s hand on his shoulder to a bed creased with sweat and a sleep shirt that fared little better. 

And Obi-Wan had known that. He’d known it, he’d known it, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to tell Qui-Gon what horror has been plaguing him since the night he’d turned eighteen. Hadn’t been able to find the words to express the depths of his anguish at seeing his master fall to his knees over and over again. At seeing his eyes widen and his mouth go slack and then waking up to a master whose eyes were rimmed with disrupted sleep and a mouth that pinched with worry.

Now, though, something’s changed.

Something has altered the course of events that Obi-Wan has known for so long that he can trace them from memory, but there’s no point in wondering what it could have been. Not when the shields are powering down and Qui-Gon is charging toward the Sith lord, green blade burning. Not when his master is slicing at the Sith with a passion that is singed with fury, and it is hard to track what darkness is billowing from the Sith and what is his master’s. 

Obi-Wan’s cheek is pressed to the floor as he watches a battle that he cannot join, his heart beating slower than it has in even his deepest meditation, and then it is over. The Sith is cut neatly in two. Obi-Wan is turned and lifted. Now he is in Qui-Gon’s arms, can finally see the blue eyes he’s needed to see, and this is somehow worse.

The darkness hasn’t left him. It wraps around each of Qui-Gon’s panting exhales. It lingers in the creases of his forehead, in the hollows of his cheekbones. Despair, yes, but worse: anger and fear. He has seen Qui-Gon struggle with these emotions in the past, but this is deeper. This is fathomless.

“Stay. Please,” Qui-Gon bids. “You are meant to be a great Jedi, Obi-Wan. I’ve seen it,” and oh how that pains Obi-Wan to hear. Not the sentiment, but the conviction. The surety. Premonitions are Obi-Wan’s purview, and yet somehow one has slithered away to sting at his master.

Qui-Gon has seen the future, has built a house upon where it sits, not realizing it is naught but shifting sands below.

“Master—”

“I can’t lose you,” he says, and his voice blazes even as the darkness gathers, wraiths whispering promises from the corners of the room, growing louder as they approach. Obi-Wan doesn’t need to hear them to know what they are offering Qui-Gon. He doesn’t need to see the barter to know that Qui-Gon is measuring the price against the weight of his soul.

“Don’t.” His voice is reedy, thin. It is no match for the clamour that fills Qui-Gon’s head. 

Time flows through them both, and as Obi-Wan weakens he can feel Qui-Gon grow stronger. Power—oily, slippery power—slides across Obi-Wan’s skin to seek out the heat of Qui-Gon’s passion.

His lips find Obi-Wan’s forehead, and Obi-Wan tips his head back. If he can live long enough for ramifications, he knows what he is about to do may very well shatter everything between.

Still he has to try. 

Catching Qui-Gon’s lips with his own, Obi-Wan kisses his master with all the ferocity, the hunger, the longing—to possess and be possessed—that he should have renounced long ago.

This is something that he has kept to himself, nestled and nurtured in his heart even as he walked at his master’s side, an exemplary padawan save the one thing that he could never bring himself to purge.

The darkness that has spread through Qui-Gon can taste Obi-Wan’s weakness and it laughs.

In a rush it flows into Obi-Wan, the roar of a river’s rapids that threaten to drown him, but he will drink this down. If there is a choice in this moment, then Obi-Wan chooses it. If there is a fall to be had, then Obi-Wan will gladly be the one to fall.

The shadows descend then—vultures ready to pick at the bones of carrion—and he doesn’t fight them. He welcomes them. They cloak him in a mantle that is unfamiliar and heavy, yet he lets them dress him just the same. The wound in his chest fills with a searing blackness and Obi-Wan can feel his strength return. He uses it to reach up, to fist his hands in Qui-Gon’s hair, to steal his breath from his mouth until they’re both panting with it.

Like clouds sweeping across a sun, the darkness passes through Qui-Gon and with a burst of brightness so blinding it makes Obi-Wan’s eyes water, light returns to his master’s heart.


End file.
